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But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the
sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the
soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To
the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low
place.
As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the
material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men
born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent
upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that
order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of
the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice
and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of
dawn.
Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and
at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and
a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they
are moving in the realm of Truth.
This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a
delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all
delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and
this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those
the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love-
just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are
not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound
are known as Lovers.
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